Serious doubts are being cast on Iran’s claim that it successfully sent a monkey into space and back earlier this week.
Several websites — including the “Telegraph” and “The Times” of London — homed in on seemingly contradictory images that Tehran offered as proof of its orbital achievement. Other reports also quote current and former rocket scientists questioning whether Iran has the knowhow to achieve the feat.
Close inspection of the video and still images in those articles suggests that the Iranians showed different monkeys.
One monkey, shown before the launch strapped into a padded seat, appeared to have light-colored fur and a red mole above its right eye. The other, shown tuxedoed in a post-mission video, appeared to be a dark-haired monkey with no mole.
Here’s a link to “The Times” article that sets the monkey photos side-by-side.
Those discrepancies have kindled speculation that the mission — whose coverage coincided with the 34th anniversary of the revolution that deposed the Shah and imposed Islamic rule on Iran — was either unsuccessful or never even happened.
The U.S. State Department said it could not confirm whether the Iranian launch actually occurred. It was also quick to note that Iran is banned by UN Resolution 1929 from “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”
MONKEYS IN SPACE: Iran’s Monkey Rocket Plans Continue A Rich History Of Primate Space Travel
Below the comparative photos of the purported simian space traveler, the“Telegraph” item by Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv quotes an Israeli source connected to efforts in that country to reach the moon with unmanned spacecraft:
Iranian officials claimed on January 28 that the monkey had landed safely after its journey 120 kilometers above Earth.
The video that at least one Western news agency released of the launch was provided by Iranian international state broadcaster Press TV.
“[The rocket] ‘Pishgam,’ which translates to ‘Pioneer Discoverer,’ was successfully launched and took a monkey with it to the elevation of 120 kilometers away from the spot where it was launched,” the PressTV reporter says, before quoting Iranian “officials [who] say Iran is ahead of other countries in the Middle East as far as space technology [is concerned].”
[UPDATE: After a full day of silence with speculation swirling, AP quoted a “senior Iranian space official” trying to explain the incongruity. Here’s how the “Huffington Post” quotes the AP story:
Whether or not Iran’s scientists managed the mission as they described it — while it’s something that a number of countries achieved decades ago, Iranobliquely confessed to killing the monkey in a similarly described test in 2011 — the announcements have also raised alarm for what they might not be saying.
BuzzFeed reported it this way in a piece called “Experts Throw Cold Water On Iranian Space Monkey” that questioned Tehran’s assertion of success and downplayed the significance of suborbital space travel at the same time:
Yahoo News’s Scott Sutherland intimated similarly in a post that asked whether the monkey launch was faked:
Iranian sources with official ties have lied before about tests that appeared to fly in the face of international opprobrium.
Western news agencies and websites were forced to apologize to readers in July 2008 after a photograph showing an Iranian missile launch was shown to have been doctored; the Iranian media arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) that supplied the picture was thought to have added a missile to the scene, seemingly for dramatic effect.
Another seeming case of photo fraud dates to 2007, when a photograph apparently distributed by the Fars news agency was alleged to have been edited to place U.S. tags on ammunition and weapons found in Iran.
RFE/RL
